Review with Sandwiches?

El Borrón, the Spanish version of The Blot, keeps getting good reviews and I keep using Google translator which yields some funny results. This one reviews me along with a few other books. Here's the broken translation:

La Cúpula is also the first who published a graphic novel of the Texan Tom Neely, a bold proposal entitled 'El Borrón' that runs between the everyday and the surreal experience. The various chapters are the emergence of a black stain that spilled on the person and life of the protagonist as a powerful metaphor that reflects the evolution of their fears, their emotional problems or communication and the search for an identity.
Neely exhibited a very fine line drawing characters to highly stylized design, which even in its distortion of the expression kinetics and intent. The story contains just a dozen sandwiches succinct text long its more than 180 pages, all made by the couple's female protagonist. There are no more words, with the exception of onomatopoeia in this long and harrowing story whose development depends entirely on the image. Thus the author uses with skill and originality all visual resources at its disposal to realize when a plot rife with symbols that clearly calls for the active participation of the reader.

I had no idea there were a dozen sandwiches in my book!

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Spanish magazine on El Borrón

I can't read this, but it's a two-page spread in a Spanish magazine about me and El Borrón.

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This one compares me to Kafka!

Another positive review of "El Borrón" comes from Spain.

Here's the broken translation courtesy of Google translator:

If the "Metamorphosis" Kafka's Gregor Samsa woke up turned into an insect, in "El Borrón" your character is attacked by a stain of ink you want to grab him, his gestures and his words. I put in two parallel stories that despite different paths followed by the start of the two is the same: The Stigma of fantastic proportions that turns its victims into a pariah. The anomaly is Esperpentos dimensions in both cases relate to social rejection.

An exaggeration that borders on absolute absurdity (a stain that spreads across the face, mouth, the flooding, which destroys everything it touches) suggests a continuum of existential doubt and, what is most remarkable, the unusual origin and meaning of "disease" becomes the perfect vehicle to draw a fairly rational interpretation of our reality.

The nightmare of the "blot" structured in three parts and with little dialogue, distinguished by the ability to surprise that generates your reading but it all seems to be on the front pages, Tom Neely manages to turn the nut of the "most difficult" in each one of the chapters with a staggering ability to reach a level of sadism-attention to the brutal beating that is dispatched to the player himself, perhaps one of the most violent in the history of comics, which fortunately falls sharply for a final hopeful that obviously does not reveal here. Although, by the way, the end is the least of which in this story (as in "Metamorphosis"), what matters is the journey, the trip to the horror, rather than the destination or termination of same.

Halfway between the first drawings of the Disney factory (the main character has an air to Mickey Mouse in his eyes and actually looks the same gloves that famous character) strips the EC Segar and stunted silhouettes of Giacometti, "The stain is the first work of astonishing Tom Neely. An author heavily influenced by impressionism and surrealism of Magritte, as evidenced by the approach of powerful graphic vignettes of this disturbing story that is now a benchmark title in the ninth art.

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Another Spanish review

I found another review of the Spanish version of The Blot online. This one isn't all positive. It seems that the reviewer unfavorably compares me to the great cartoonist Jason. The review calls me a "Jason Minor" and says my narrative reminds him too much of something by Jason. I've read several of Jason's books, but I'd be curious to know which one the review is comparing me to. I also find it interesting that this might be the first review that calls my book "funny." Anyway... Here's the link. And here's the broken translation:

With a desire to contradict the spirit of my blog, namely that of a comic book blog ever talks about comics, I will start a series of brief minireseñas some of the comics that I read lately. Start:

I will not deny that I enjoyed with the original proposal of Tom Neely and its striking use of the expressive possibilities of the comic. Nor deny that the history of The blot holds human interest, which can even think that this strange relationship of these strange people. But I just do not convince. The story of Neely, style aside, reminds me too much to the narrative of Jason, but Jason a minor, with a rate less able to give the impression sometimes gum stretched over the account and also a bit bland. And that issue may well have been signed by the Norwegian, but to reach the level of a Jason Neely lacks irony and sobran pages. Many pages. In short, a funny comic but somewhat disappointing.

Score: 7

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Joder, me has fallen the red boat.!

My first Spanish review of El Borrón arrived today. If you can read Spanish, go here.

Here's avery broken Yahoo Babel Fish translation that doesn't make a lot of sense:

Joder, me has fallen the red boat.! This exclamation must of have loosen almost any sketcher to it of cómics, and I also suppose that Tom Neely, the creator of ' The Borrón'. And I dare to venture that the idea of this cómic was born when had a mishap of this type. Perhaps, in one of those moments, it said " we canalize the wrath that this causes and we remove to him something to me of benefit, I will make a tebeo… " TO EXTEND PHOTO ' The Borrón' he is cómic very complex, where Tom Neely has decided, mainly, to play and to undergo with all the mechanisms and techniques that the means allow him, using like protagonist to the red. Is pure metalanguage, in volume where love demonstrates his by cómic at the same time as reference can to serve as for all those sketchers that wants to see what can be done, until where can to arrive in some aspects, where it is the border… and that Neely is young, was born in 1975. History is practically dumb and narrates the life of an anonymous personage, in a city whatever it suddenly begins to see itself persecuted by the Red (the Nothing of ' Interminable' History;). Chapter to chapter, is surrounded in the rocambolescas situations, and every time it is seen more surpassed by the situation until he appears his rescuing angel in the form of woman who will take to him by the correct way, it calms, it cures and it alleviates to him. But everything is not what it seems, and the angel can become demon… In the end, in which the author tries is a happy end, it appears the color in the tebeo, like a metaphor. Between the strongpoints of this work they are all that we have mentioned of dominion of the technique and to experiment with means and to show its possibilities. In it must, is the fact that it needs a little spark, of feeling, although it can be compensated from the above. by Ricardo Mena

If anyone wants to give me a better translation, that would be nice.

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